> The university then gets to decide to admit your child in return.
> It may not be meritocratic, but it's not corrupt (except perhaps insofar as by pretending the exchange is a donation, the university and donor manage to cheat the taxman).
> The donor is simply paying the university to provide a service that they have every right to offer for money.
> It also benefits other students, which is why the universities take the deals in the first place.
> In this case, we're talking about bribery of specific employees to act against the interests of their employer. That's simply corruption.
> They might be equally non-meritocratic, but they're definitely not equally dishonest or equally socially harmful.[1]
I don't think that's ever been acceptable. I mean, people do it, but it's not acceptable in the least.
I feel pretty bad for the kids too. They will forever know that they aren't a 'real' student.
Their defense is that they thought it was a legal donation, but clearly still expected that it would buy their daughter admission.
I don't think they care at all.
Given that everyone, from faculty, to students, to employers, accepts it, without batting an eye, I'd daresay that yes, it is acceptable.
You may personally not like it, but society accepts it.
There's a lot of, for instance, sociopathic behaviours that I do not like, and most people consider unfair, unjust, unethical, etc - yet our society not only accepts, but rewards them.
I would rather attend a school with a $500 million endowment and a handful of idiots running around than a school with a $400 million endowment where everyone who is there deserved to be there.
Idiots are a problem wherever they are. If a good educational pedigree gives their idiocy a patina of respectable credibility, that's a social and political problem, not just an educational one.
A university will happily tarnish its illusion of 'meritocracy' for the right amount of money - as long as it is the beneficiary. It's not going to let its employees tarnish that image for personal gain.
Life isn't fair, and neither are admissions (Although the universities try their best to convince children and the non-thinking otherwise.)
When a store's employees steal merchandise from a store, and sell it out of the back door, they aren't guilty of raising prices for the store's customers. They are guilty of theft... From their employer. Nobody wastes time moralizing about what impact their actions have on shoppers, because it's a second-order effect.
Selling the illusion of a university being a meritocracy is the same thing. Employees doing it for personal gain are stealing from the university, not the students.
However, In this case, the spot was for a good student with a solid sailing sports background that was taken.